I don’t know if I believe in rage as something always acting in opposition to tenderness. I believe, more often, in the two as braided together. Two elements of trying to survive in a world once you have an understanding of that world’s capacity for violence.
Hanif Abdurraqib, “Board Up the Doors, Tear Down the Walls,” A Little Devil in America
ANGER is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.
David Whyte, Consolations
I was incoherent with rage. Days have passed and now I am coherent with rage.
Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters
When one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like old leather. And finally, it becomes so familiar that one can’t remember feeling any other way.
Captain Picard, ”The Wounded,” Star Trek: The Next Generation
Anger has its place. Anger has fire, and fire moves things.
Nina Simone
